The New Options for Waste And Saving The Environment (NO WASTE) pilot precinct focuses on design and development of new material circular economies to fit operating environments from regional to metropolitan scales.
University of Southern Queensland researchers – based in the Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences and Centre for Future Materials – are working to design a sustainable future with ‘no waste’, through partnered technical material research, education, and employment initiatives to convert Australia’s unrecovered waste into value-added products and creating employment.
NO WASTE operates in partnership with industry, community, vocation, and school education and supported by the Department for Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) via a Strategic University Reform Fund (SURF) grant.
Its key functions include:
Collaboration
- Project stakeholders include university, local government, industry, schools, vocational education entities and communities in the Toowoomba and Ipswich regions
- Future goal is to expand the strategies and technologies developed to wider Australia
- Open to further partnerships with other entities looking to initiate new circular economy manufacturing start-ups and create new supply chains – contact NOWASTE@unisq.edu.au
Circular Economy Modelling
- Circular economy modelling to inform investment decisions and policy for new high value material pathways
- Physical circular economy demonstrators including micro-processing, mobile and advanced manufacturing approaches
- Initial material focus – problematic polymers, glasses, fibres, cellulosic biomass
- Future planned product focus – solar PV panels, fibre composites, textiles
- Scale and scenario specific modelling from regional to metropolitan, to reduce landfill and optimise and transform supply chains
- Development of new modelling approaches incorporating technoeconomic, logistic, environmental and social impact variables to determine viability
Building capacity and capability
- Pre-processing infrastructure deployment to waste recovery sites to prepare raw materials for product manufacture
- Micro-processing equipment infrastructure including additive manufacturing for developing and producing new products from landfill-diverted materials
- Development of waste transformation process technologies fit for purpose and scale of different operating environments
- Materials physicochemical characterisation to inform development of new standards for product applications
Education Transformation
- Creating future work-forces with a suite of education initiatives
- Professional development workshops for local and national businesses in circular economy, supply chain sustainability, entrepreneurship and sustainability leadership
- Vocational training for new processing technologies and approaches
- Summer research programs with industry to rapidly upskill tertiary students
- Trialling of new education resources to upskill and inspire primary and secondary students for long term innovator and workforce development
- Tertiary education transformation across multiple programs in science, engineering, business and education
Blueprint for the future
- NO WASTE is a regional test case for development of new circular economies while also assessing larger scale circular economies through a modelling approach
- Research and education program learnings disseminated nationally and internationally to inform tailored approaches for a range of operating environments, supply chains and communities
